Something was different. It might have been that this service was happening on a Friday night instead of a Sunday morning, but that was not quite it. The church was uncharacteristically packed, but that was not it, either. That about 99 percent of its occupants were women might have been part of what seemed so unusual in that sanctuary. But more than anything what was palpably, noticeably different in this northeastern mainline United Church of Christ cathedral was the sense of anticipation, of expectancy and maybe even downright excitement at what was about to transpire.
The energy buzzing through the congregation would at first glance seem more at home in a Southern California megachurch than in such a pillar of tradition as a northeastern mainline Protestant church. But there it was, right in the midst of that stone church, proof that there is at least the potential of vibrant life, hungering for something more.
A sort of modern day Great Awakening seems to be on the verge of breaking into American life. This time its evangelist is not a preacher, but The New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert’s latest book, Eat, Pray, Love, the story of her spiritual journey after a difficult divorce, is the catalyst for this phenomenon. Sit on any subway or visit any coffee shop where people are reading and you are bound to find someone reading Eat, Pray, Love. It has been number one on The New York Times Bestseller List since May. Gilbert has appeared as a guest of talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Twice. Winfrey invited Gilbert to return because of the overwhelming response her first visit garnered. Not only an American best seller, Eat, Pray, Love has been translated into more than 30 languages.
Gilbert’s story opens with her collapsed on the floor, falling apart, and in the midst of a marriage doing the same. The book unfolds as she embarks upon a journey that takes her to Italy, India and Bali to find, through the experience of pleasure, prayer, and balance, a pathway through her failure and fear to a life of centered groundedness.
Her language is that of a spiritual seeker, more than a dogmatic doctrinalist, but her message seems to be tapping an undercurrent of hunger that the traditional church just may have missed along the way. “I’ve come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call ‘The Physics of The Quest’ — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum,” Gilbert explains in describing her journey on her Web site. “And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: ‘If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared — most of all — to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself … then truth will not be withheld from you.'” Gilbert’s words sound an awful lot like, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32).
As Gilbert began to speak to the 800 or so women gathered under the cathedral’s vaulted ceilings on that rainy Friday night the noise quieted, but the sense of expectation remained almost deafening.
“There is a hunger in our culture to think that transformation can happen quickly,” Gilbert suggested, insisting that this is often far from the truth. “Don’t be afraid to sit with the ‘I don’t know’ in your life,” she consoled. “‘I don’t know’ is an answer,” Gilbert continued. “You cannot let fear stop you from doing the work that you were called to do.”
For all their impact, it was not Gilbert’s words that offered the most convincing testimony. They were compelling and articulate — more of both than many sermons heard on a Sunday morning. Her presence spoke the loudest in telling her story of spiritual transformation. She spoke as one with authority, not as your average scribes and teachers of the law, but the authority of someone who has been on a journey, a quest, and who has made it to the other side.
It’s safe to assume that most of those 800 or so women who came to hear Gilbert speak that night had already read Eat, Pray, Love. They were not in that sanctuary for factual information — they already had that. In the question and answer time following her presentation, some of those present seemed to have committed to memory an almost troubling amount of factual detail from Gilbert’s memoir. They came for the “presence.” Clearly Gilbert’s book is striking something deep within these searchers, and they had come to see for themselves, to experience Gilbert for themselves.
Somehow in telling her story, Elizabeth Gilbert is connecting to a longing that is much broader and deeper than hers alone. Could it be that hers is a story of brokenness, searching, healing, and redemption? It is all those things. But could it be that the world, or at least the 800 women in that sanctuary that night (and a few million more who have bought her book) long for someone to tell them a story of brokenness, searching, healing, and redemption in a way that they can actually connect with it?
Possibly the most compelling aspect of that evening was to be in the presence of a woman who has been utterly transformed so much so that it almost seems to seep out of her. Gilbert has been changed by her spiritual odyssey and as much as anything it seems that the rapt listeners that night wanted to come and see for themselves what that looked like up close. They wanted to encounter it for themselves. Well, perhaps more to the point, they wanted it for themselves.
One wonders, will those who search find on Sunday morning what they came so hungry for on that Friday night?
Erin Dunigan is a freelance writer/photographer living in Newport Beach, Calif.
